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I got on stage for the first time at a strip mall dive bar in Vegas. The Escape Lounge II - where the drinks are always free. It was a Tuesday and Big Fat Ron Putnam gave me 5 minutes to do my jack-off jokes.

I was quite drunk and did fairly well.

I've been quite drunk and done fairly well for an extended run now. That's a seperate anniversary altogether.

It was the night before Thanksgiving, 1980 and the Big Kids said I could come out with them drinking. It was one of those things you know is going to happen eventually like losing your virginity. You were going to get drunk for the first time. You were just waiting for an invite from the Big Kids. It was the nod from Johnny.

I asked for a bottle of Riunite red because I thought it must taste like everything else a 13 year-old drinks. Like red.

Big Kids

They fucked up and got me white but I wasn't going to complain. I was with the big kids now. Behind Tatnuck School. Where the big kids drank. And I drank almost the whole bottle. Good goodness was I fucked up. We wandered on and in the alley behind the hardware store they gave me a Marlboro red - I now smoke Marlboro white but ain't it funny how it goes - and that cigarette blew my buzz into overdrive like doing a nitrous hit on mushrooms.

What Kerry might have looked like

Thanksgiving Eve, 1980. That's the night it started with Kerry Hanley, our next-door neighbor who was older and therefore cool and allowed me along. She had big tits and one time I played with her nipple when she passed out drunk in our basement. A sort of date rape but heck, this girl procures alcohol and cigarettes for minors.

Tit for tat.

Now my cough sounds like Mother's did when we were kids and she was my age. We could always tell where she was in the supermarket by her cough. One aisle over, *cough* - thats Mother. Now I have her cough and she has death swirling around her like gnats or no-see-ums. She can't walk three stairs without gasping and taking pause for bad breath.

How silly it must look to someone who doesn't know addiction.

Rehab

It's at a point where I will avoid any brand of fun if it doesn't allow for cigarettes. And all of my other habits that one might call "bad" are companion pieces to cigarettes.

25 years ago to the day, this Thanksgiving eve, I started drinking and smoking tobacco. To mark the anniversary I will get alarmingly drunk on many beverages including a shitty bottle of Riunite red wine and I will smoke Marlboros and in the morning I will be checking into a facility of my own making.

I will be quitting everything for a month.

Cigarettes Alcohol Caffiene Meat Bad Drugs

I even plan to exercise. Rogan once went 30 days without blowing a load. Maybe I'll add that in for kicks.

But it's only the smokes I care to stay off of permanently. The 30 days will end Christmas Day and I will more than likely get amazingly drunk and eat a live and yelping dog. I even plan on replacing cigarettes with a new terrible habit like perhaps setting things on fire or helping the poor. But I will not smoke.

"The question has been location? location? location?"

Costa Rica sounded like the perfect place until I thought of being miserable in Costa Rica. I'd rather wait and be drunk on a beach in Costa Rica when I didn't need to smoke. So for now I believe the best place will be right here at home where Father Luke and I have built a Command Center out of Tiki Bars in the living room, where we are sitting under fake palm umbrellas and stealing things off of Limewire.

Mission Control at the Command Center

By posting my intentions for better living, I know I have created a jinx where I will now be offered a grotesque amount of money to do a gig just after Thanksgiving and have to push my rehab plan up to the 30 year anniversary for love of round numbers.